What exactly is a Panda link and what has Google shifted its focus to with the Panda update?

I'm a junior SEO and I've been struggling with the jargon surrounding this update. This is the first I'm hearing about Panda in SEO. If someone could explain it to me I would really appreciate it.
Answer:

There shouldn't be any real jargon around Panda. There's no such thing as a 'panda link', as far as I know, and the update focuses mostly on filtering out sites that are stuffed with low-quality content. The big change that few people are talking about is the fact that, with Panda, Google is now taking entire sites into account when ranking pages. Previously, Google went page-by-page, and a site with 999 crappy pages and 999 great ones might be able to get the good ones to rank w/o any negative effects. Now, a site with 999 crappy pages will find those pages affect their ability to rank the good ones, too. If you really want to learn Panda, you have to get pretty deep into the technology. Read a few of these articles: http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=5636 http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=5325 http://www.seo-theory.com/2011/05/06/characteristics-of-the-google-panda-algorithm/

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Other answers

Ian is right in saying that their shouldn't be any jargon surrounding Panda, and as far as i'm aware there isn't really any. The Panda update has changed SEO quite considerably in that now not only is the whole site important but metrics that determine usability are likely to play an ever increasing part in the ranking factors. Googles aim is to provide sites that people 'like'. They have quality raters that decide on 'good' sites and 'bad' sites and then by comparing the differences they are able to algorithmically promote good sites and drop bad ones. This means essentially that it's no longer the job of an SEO just to ensure a site has decent unique, crawlable content and then build links to it. Now we are tasked with ensuring users enjoy and trust the sites we are promoting. Rand at SEOmoz did a good Whiteboard Friday about this - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-googles-panda-update-changed-seo-best-practices-forever-whiteboard-friday well worth checking out.

James Blackwell

Some articles on this topic that were eye-opening to me, I assume they will do the same for you: - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/postpanda-your-original-content-is-being-outranked-by-scrapers-amp-partners - http://searchengineland.com/google-weve-made-no-significant-changes-to-the-farmer-update-66591 - http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/08/technology/google_algorithm_change/ - http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/03/the-panda-that-hates-farms/all/1

Theo van der Zee

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